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Manga Girls Beware: Extra Large Eyes Caused Neanderthal's Demise

Posted by Unknown on from the four-eyes-stays-alive dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports on a new study of prehistoric skulls which suggests that Neanderthals became extinct because they had larger eyes than our species. As a consequence of having extra sized eyes, an average 6 millimeters larger in radius, more of their backside brain volume was devoted to seeing, at the expense of frontal lobe high-level processing of information and emotions. This difference affected their ability to innovate and socialize the way we, modern people (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) do. When the last Ice Age set on 28,000 years ago, Neanderthals had no sewn clothes and no large organized groups to rely on each other, hastening their fall. Yet, they were not stupid, brutish creatures as portrayed in Hollywood films, they were very, very smart, but not quite in the same league as the Homo Sapiens of Cromagnon."

9 of 290 comments (clear)

  1. Idle speculation by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Personally, I'm more partial to the theory that we *are* Neanderthals (hybrids) and that they didn't 'die out', but were simply bred away.

    There has been little hard evidence that Neanderthals were any less intelligent than Sapiens, just less evidence found for their intelligence, likely because there were far fewer of them. Studies of their flint knapping abilities show they were at least as skilled at toolmaking as Sapiens.

    Anyhow, the article reads ore like a daydream than a piece on science, as evidence for the most important part (percent usage of the brain for eyesight, and the retardation effects of this difference)are omitted.

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    1. Re:Idle speculation by CAIMLAS · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yeah, no kidding. My first response was, "what the fuck?" This is (seemingly typical) bad science.

      I'm sorry, there's more than 10mm variability in eye size in existing populations. That variability is kind of how you get stereotypes and things like manga in the first place. Not only that, but extrapolating "they didn't have mental capacity because they had larger eyes" doesn't even begin to follow, logically. Maybe their visual cortex was the same size? Maybe it was actually smaller and significantly more efficient, allowing them to actually process more of what they saw (unlike us, who ignore most of it)? Maybe, just maybe, they used more of their brains - which were actually bigger, despite the "they were stupid by modern standards" stereotypes.

      Pretty tiring. It's pretty irritating to see the "science" out of these types.

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    2. Re:Idle speculation by Sique · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In certain ways, yes. Chimps are known to torture other chimps, and ape packs are known to go after other packs of the same species and try to kill them all off.

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  2. Hrm by papasui · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I thought it was already proven that Europeans are the ancestors of Neanderthals through DNA sequencing? And it's this very DNA responsible for a strong immune system in people with large amounts of Neanderthal DNA.

  3. Re:Radius vs. Diameter by narcc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yep. From the article:

    Ms Pearce found that Neanderthals had significantly larger eye sockets - by an average of 6mm from top to bottom.

    From the summary:

    As a consequence of having extra sized eyes, an average 6 millimeters larger in radius,

    Submitter must be a science reporter...

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    Required reading for internet skeptics
  4. Re:This just in by PoliTech · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Now that cloning may have been perfected, we just need an “extremely adventurous female human” to carry a cloned Neanderthal baby.

    Wild enough?

  5. Re:Still a lot of evolving to do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Natural evolution is an unguided process, as such it has no goals, therefore we don't have any evolving to do.

    Personally I am of the opinion that natural human evolution will end by the end of the 22nd century at the latest, by that time all new humans will be genetically engineered. Instead of relying on chance to pass the best genes from parents to their offspring, parents will engineer the embryo to have the best genes at least for the most important attributes, and in some cases, modified genes to prevent heritable diseases being passed on.

  6. Forgetting something by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Human society is organized through violence -- just as in the animal kingdom. It's just that human beings are better at sweeping it under the carpet, or pretending it doesn't exist ("government by the people"). If government was by and for the people, then logically, government wouldn't need guns.

    Remember the objective definition of government: it is the organization holding a monopoly on the "right" to employ violence as a means. Everthing government does is founded on either violence or the threat of violence. Government is ubiquitous in human society, and therefore, violence is ubiquitous in human society.

    Putting it in the proper context, the fact that human beings show less frequency of visible violence than their closest relatives in the animal kingdom isn't exactly a call for celebration.

  7. Re:This just in by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And from the departement of wild speculations we have the following gem...

    There is a way to test this hypothesis. There is a variation in eyeballs size among modern humans. If this hypothesis is correct, people with bigger eyeballs should be dumber. So get a random sample of people, measure their eyeballs, give them an IQ test, and see if there is any correlation.